Long time no see! I'm still not really ready to return from my blog hiatus, but I just wanted to link to a couple of reviews I've written over at Young Adult Books Central:

The Redheaded Princess, by Ann Rinaldi (to be released in January '08)

The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen

In writerly news, I made some progress on Jessie (epistolary YA) this morning, thanks to an early-morning writing date. I was so wrapped up in Good Night, Odile for ages that I didn't have time to fall in love with a new project, so I had no idea what I was going to work on. I think this decision was the right one. It will keep my creative juices from drying up until I can go back to Good Night, Odile, and it's a project that comes together quickly (once I get going on it), so it makes me feel productive. It just feels right.

Take care, y'all. I hope you're warm and cozy, wherever you are.

I had an absolutely brilliant time at my first midnight thingie where I waited in line for Deathly Hallows. I've read it, and finished it, over the past few days. My thoughts are below the cut.

( Spoilers abound! )

How about you? What did you think? (Warning, spoilers in the comments!)

p.s. I'll talk more about the midnight thingie later. For now, I'm off to catch up on blogs.

I finished 1984 yesterday, and when I set it down, my first thought was, "What a depressing book." And it is. However, the one line, the one passage, the one thought that made me put the book down for a moment because I couldn't see it through a veil of tears, was this:

"The eyes of the chinless man kept flitting towards the skull-faced man, then turning guiltily away, then being dragged back by an irresistable attraction. Presently he began to fidget on his seat. At last he stood up, waddled clumsily across the cell, dug down into the pocket of his overalls, and, with an abashed air, held out a grimy piece of bread to the skull-faced man."

And then chipmunk fellow gets his mouth bashed in. That's #&@$%^ messed up.

After I finished the book and discussed it with Mum and read about it on the Internet, I realized that out of all the messed up things in the book, all the messed up people in a messed up world, this man, a man that I have never met before page 246 and will never meet again after page 249, brought tears to my eyes with a simple act of kindness.

It is a sad day when offering a piece of bread to a starving man seems like a bloody miracle. In the grim and feral world that Orwell created in 1984 -- a world that doesn't sound impossible -- there is a man who hasn't had humanity torn from his soul. There is still hope. As long as there are people like chipmunk fellow, there is still hope. Humanity is a gift to be clung to, not purged. 1984 is a nightmare, but right now, at this moment, it isn't our nightmare.

My thoughts go out to the families and friends of the Virgina Tech tragedy.

Another season of As Time Goes By (on DVD) has come and gone. Time to put the next one on hold. I had seen scattered episodes at my grandparents' house before, but never the beginning seasons. I love that Jean and Lionel didn't just fall into each others arms after 38 years apart and wishing. It makes it all the more satisfying when they succumb, inch by inch.

As long as we're on the topic of favourites, my favourite book of all time, Say Goodnight, Gracie has almost been usurped by Sarah Dessen's The Truth About Forever. When I looked at the blurb inside the flap at the library, the mention of "a boy with a past" very nearly made me cringe and shove it back on the shelf. I've read one too many novels about the bad boy who either turns out to have a heart of gold or eases the main character off of the yellow brick road. As it turns out, Wes is my favourite character. He tells his 16-year old younger brother to use his inside voice, he sculpts scrap metal, and he knows just how to make a girl feel better.

Okay, you might say, but you didn't know that at the library. Why did you take a chance?

Because the blurb wasn't about a girl learning to love, or rebelling against her parents, or trying to escape the overwhelming shadow of a sibling. It was about a girl struggling to find her voice, which, when you look at it, encompasses all three possible situations, and that's just my point. It looked like a book about a real person. I didn't realize just how hooked I was until page 208, when Wes and Macy, the main character, are eating waffles and sniffing their syrup-scented pencils.

One of the main rules of fiction that I've discovered is to make your characters real or believable. I have found two books that hit me that way: Say Goodnight, Gracie and The Truth About Forever. The thing to remember is that, in the words of Shark, the truth is relative. The driver of the number four bus may find Macy, Wes, Jimmy, and Morgan fanciful or even superficial, but that doesn't make them any less real to me. It's a lesson to be learned, and with that said, I'm off to work on my book.

( There's a coincidence for you! )